How Suzi Quatro went from obscurity to number one
What does it take to make a number-one single? Surely there is a secret that artists such as The Beatles, The Who and Joni Mitchell aren’t telling us. It can’t all just be luck! Well, depending on who you speak to, you will get a new answer on what it is that connects with the public enough to get a number one single. However, as Suzi Quatro can attest, authenticity is a huge part of the equation.
People aren’t dumb; they know potential when they see it. It would be hard to watch someone like Suzi Quatro perform and not recognise that there was star potential in every movement. The issue wasn’t that Quatro was a fantastic artist; the problem was that people seemed reluctant to let her simply flourish as an artist and seemed hellbent on changing the way she performed.
She was always able to maintain her individual spirit and reject the pressure to alter how she looked, performed, and wrote. While this might not have paid off immediately, in time, Quatro found success, and it was her devotion to her overall sound that helped her achieve this.
For instance, Quatro liked to perform in bands made up of all women. A lot of people would tell her that it doesn’t make a difference, and while she knew that, it was a matter of principle. Women weren’t given as many opportunities in music, so Quatro wanted to right that wrong. Can both women and men play music equally well? Yes, of course, they can, but women weren’t given the chances that men were, so Quatro was unwavering in her band dynamics even when people were telling her to change.
“When we first started, we just wanted to prove something,” Quatro admitted, “People are telling you all the time you can’t do something so you get a bunch of strong-headed girls and they go right ahead and do it.”
One of the first producers to come along who wanted to keep Quatro as she was, was Mickie Most. Most was a British record producer who loved her music and said he wanted to work with her. Quatro eventually moved to England to work with Most, and this led to the creation of one of her first-ever number-one singles, ‘Can The Can’.
This was a dramatic change for Quatro, who hadn’t seen a huge amount of mainstream success before this song. As is the case with anybody who achieves success in a creative field, Quatro was asked what the secret was, to which she answered that it all lay in the fact that she remained true to her authentic self. When she started working with Most, who also let her be her authentic self, it allowed them both to make music freely.
“We`ve had one major plan that`s stuck right through our association, which was he said he liked something in me that was a natural thing and I said great, don`t ever change it, and he said he`d never change it, and that was our thing,” said Quatro, “A man that`s smart enough to see the natural talent instead of trying to create something… that`s what’s so great about Mickey. He directed me and brought out what he saw as important things.”
